But they were Bush's first significant admission of setbacks in his Iraq policy and signaled a new White House strategy to win back voters who have soured on the war.

In effect, Bush is trying to say to the public: I'm not blind to the problems you see in Iraq, but I have a plan to fix them, and you should stick it out with me.

"The administration has been hearing that the president needs to be more candid with the American people, and you're seeing that," one senior administration official said after Bush's speech Wednesday.

Several Republican strategists welcomed the change, acknowledging Bush has been too slow to respond to Democratic critics who recently seized the debate with attacks on Bush's handling of the war.

"I think they got themselves into thinking, `We're so right on this that we don't even have to say anything until people see we're right,'" said Rich Galen, a Republican strategist who spent six months in Iraq advising the provisional American administration.

"When every poll had him in the 30s, somebody finally said, `This ain't working,'" Galen said, referring to Bush's approval rating in polls last month.

Bush's new approach appears to be helping, at least a little. An Associated Press/Ipsos poll released Friday showed Bush's overall approval rating at 42 percent, up from 37 percent a month ago, with a slight uptick in the number of voters backing his handling of the war. A New York Times/CBS News poll out Thursday also showed a rise in Bush's popularity to 40 percent, up from 35 percent last month.